


The Whipping Boy

by zade



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Concussions, Corporal Punishment, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Poly, Self-Harm, Shock Lashing, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Whipping, early season two, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 04:02:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3514634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zade/pseuds/zade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is silent for the first five hits.  The guards lay into him with such force that he swings in his bonds with every hit, and his back begins to bleed after only a handful of lashes, but still he is silent.</p>
<p>Murphy gets shock lashed as punishment for the murders. Everything goes downhill from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whipping Boy

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings: corporal punishment (shock lashing), ptsd, suicide attempt (self harm based on ptsd flashback), but then some comfort at the end
> 
> Abby is a little out of character, but I made her the woman I want her to character to be instead of the one she actually is.
> 
> beta'd by the spectacular [hateboners](www.hateboners.tumblr.com)

The punishment is carried out swiftly. They shackle him to the wooden posts with seatbelts turned restraints. Fifteen blows for each death, which is five less for each than the Exodus Charter demands, but he is a child and Abby is a mother.

His arms immediately shake with the strain. He is skinny, almost skeletal without his shirt. He faces the ground, eyes down, unwilling to meet the eyes of the gathered people. He killed two people, two someone’s sons. His face itches where his hair hangs against it, but he can’t move his arms to fix it. 

It is somehow more concerning than the fact he is about to be shock lashed.

Abby calls out, “begin!” and he is hit, back arching away from the searing pain of the volt traveling up his spine.

He is silent for the first five hits. The guards lay into him with such force that he swings in his bonds with every hit, and his back begins to bleed after only a handful of lashes, but still he is silent.

By the seventh he is crying, face wet and breathing labored with tears and sobs. 

Abby can barely bring herself to keep the count. Bellamy and Clarke look determinedly out into the distance, avoiding Abby and Murphy and each other and their own consciences. Abby counts though, because it is her duty.

Each time the shock lash hits, there is a spray of blood and his muscles seize tight, pulling away from the source of his pain, but he is pained, and by the sixteenth hit, he is whining, high pitched and constant, eyes squeezed shut and chest shaking with sobs and frantic gasps.

Bellamy can’t decide if it’s a fair punishment. He thinks not. Octavia squeezes his hand tight, like he is the one being lashed. He thinks it would be better if it was him. He made mistakes, too.

He left Murphy flailing, he kicked out the box, he started him down the path that led to where they are now.

“It’s not your fault,” Octavia whispers in his ear. She has always been perceptive, and now that she interacts with more than two people on a regular basis, she has only gotten more so.

Perceptive doesn’t mean right, though. He is almost certain it was his fault.

Murphy screams on the twentieth hit, animalistic—savage, Clarke thinks—and pulls as hard as he can on his restraints, which don’t budge.

She meets his eyes for a second, but he is lost in the pain, eyes glazed and overflowing with tears.

He killed two people, she thinks, he deserves it. She wonders if, given the chance, his victims wouldn’t have finished him off first.

He screams again, and again, and again.

Abby says, “again,” and “again,” and “again.” 

He is lost in the pain, mindless for it. He is drunk on agony and hatred. He wants to be anywhere else; he wants to be dead. He thinks for a moment that he is still in the Grounder camp, that he is still on the Ark, that he is already dead and this disaster of a planet is his hell.

Bellamy counts each hit, too; he gives Octavia’s hand a little squeeze with each blow. 

Octavia understands. This was their issue, their matter to resolve. The justice of the Ark was not their justice, and the blood that Murphy spilled, by Grounder rules, was owed to him. Octavia holds Bellamy’s hand and lets him squeeze.

The grounders are going to kill him, they are going to strip the flesh from his bones and feed him to the beasts and no one will find him, no one will look for him because no one cares no one ever cares and he’s sobbing and choking, the pain so hot and heavy down his back and it radiates through his body. Each strike paralyzes his lungs and he feels like he’s drowning as the sharp pain locks his muscles up tight and sparks through his nerves like an explosion bright—white—quick.

He doesn’t react when they reach thirty. He is hanging, sagged in the restraints, legs bent and weak. Nobody reacts for a moment, and then Murphy takes in a shaking breath and howls.

Clarke yells “Cut him down!” but Bellamy is already there, holding him up and undoing one of the metal clips with one hand.

Murphy jerks away from the contact, dislodging Bellamy and stumbling backwards. His other arm is still bound, and he tugs at it, pulling weakly, collapsed on the ground. Delirious.

Abby yells, “Someone restrain him,” which Clarke thinks is the exact opposite of what needs to be done. She can see what’s going to happen just before it does. Bellamy is frantically trying to release Murphy’s other arm while not touching him and the guards are stock still, unable or unwilling to help.

Murphy is pulling at his bound arm, crying. His face is visible now, and it’s red and wet. He gives it one more savage tug and Clarke looks away right before the sickening pop of Murphy’s arm dislocating.

He howls again, clawing at the dislocated arm and when Bellamy finally gets the restraint undone, Murphy stumbles backwards, huddling in on himself.

Clarke exhales a shaky breath and struggles to inhale.

Bellamy is hovering at Murphy’s side, trying to keep from touching him, even though Clarke can tell that’s all he wants to do. To ground him. To help him.

He passes out a moment later, overcome by nerves or stress or pain, and Bellamy gathers him up and runs for the infirmary, Clarke running fast behind him.

Abby swallows hard and addresses her people. “Justice has been served. Please return to your duties.” She is the embodiment of restraint in her authoritative voice and walk to the infirmary. She wants to run. She is bad at standing still while others hurt, but she has a duty to her people, and so she walks.

Clarke and Bellamy have wrestled Murphy’s unresponsive body onto the operating table, and they are both looking at her with varying amounts of blame.

“We need to put his shoulder back into place and bandage his back. And when we’re done, I want him cuffed to the bed, so he won’t hurt himself again.”

Bellamy steps back into the shadows. He knows nothing of medicine, but his guilt won’t let him leave Murphy like this. He stands, arms crossed, and tries to school his expression into something less murderous.

The shoulder goes back in easily enough. The cover his back with salve and bandage it. Clarke resolves to go out after and gather more red seaweed to help ward of infection. That way, she will not be stuck sitting here with her thoughts. They bind his dislocated shoulder and arm to his chest, in a sling of bandages, and Abby cuffs his uninjured arm to the side of the table.

Once they are finished Abby nods and says, “Okay.” Bellamy and Clarke both look at her, unsure. “We are going to go into the hall, are you are going to tell me that I didn’t just let a child with PTSD get tortured. Or at the very least, why you didn’t think it was important to tell me.”

Bellamy let himself get ushered, and after a glance at Clarke, doesn’t let himself linger on her. He’s sure his face mirrors her; the complete slack-jawed horror that the thought had never even crossed their minds. Murphy came back the same, of course he did, because what could the grounders have done that would truly change him? 

Murphy wakes up alone. He is in pain; he is on fire. He tries to move, but his arms are stuck, one held fast to his side, the other attached to whatever he’s lying on. He opens his eyes but everything is blurry and dirty and he must have dreamed everything because this is the grounder camp, this is it, and he is going to die.

He rolls to the side to see if he can dislodge himself, and he falls barely containing a scream, wrist twisted the wrong way and throbbing, his back hot with sudden blood and his other arm still twinging and useless. They are going to kill him slowly, and he is going to tell them everything he knows.

No. He won’t let that happen. He is breathing too fast and his head is pounding. He blinks until his vision clears a little, and right in front of his face, a metal construct, with his wrist attached. He’s been here before. He tried to do it before, in the camp, before, and he couldn’t because he was too scared. He’s not scared, now.

Without a moment of thought, he slams his head against it.

It immediately begins to ache, and a small stream of blood runs down his nose, just in his eyeline. 

He realizes it won’t be a pleasant way to go. He does it again.

Clarke and Abby are arguing in hushed tones about punishments and mental states. Bellamy has no time for this, and almost says as much, when he hears a noise from inside the infirmary. It’s something banging on metal, a sound he is familiar with, growing up helping his sister in and out of the metal floor.

Bellamy says, “Did you hear that?” and it happens again. He rushes back in before either of the women can stop him and rounds the empty bed as soon as he sees it.

Murphy is glassy-eyed banging his head with all his might against the metal of the table. He stands there and watches Murphy do it three more times before his brain kicks back in and Bellamy shoves his hand against the metal, blocking Murphy from hitting it.

Murphy’s head hits his hand hard, instead, and leaves a smear of blood against his palm.

Bellamy realizes that Abby is behind him when she says, “Clarke, untie his hand,” and then Murphy is free, and he drags him away from the bed and into the center of the room, cradling Murphy’s head in his hands.

“Murphy,” he says, and then, “John. Wake up.”

Murphy tilts his head towards Bellamy’s slowly, blinks at him dazedly. “Safe?” he asks after a moment.

Clarke squats down next to them and pulls his hair away from his forehead so she and her mother can see the extent of the damage. “Yeah,” she says. “We got you, you’re safe.”

He collapses, then, into Bellamy’s arms, breath hitching with sobs.

The cut is large and bloody, but not actually too deep. Abby thinks he is probably concussed, but he lets them move him and bandage his wounds again, so she counts it as a partial blessing. He is drunk-pliant, muscles loose and head swimming.

“Safe?” he asks again when they’re done.

“Yeah,” Bellamy says, like it isn’t the fourth or fifth time he’s answered. “You’re safe.” All the guilt he felt has grown, tenfold, and he wishes he had been one of the few who had objected to Murphy being punished.

His mother had told him that looking back, you always made the worst decisions. The trick was to learn how to look forward and make the best ones you could.

“I want to stay with him tonight,” he tells Abby and Clarke, and is not at all surprised when Clarke says, “me too,” before Abby can object.

Abby nods after a moment. “Fine. Make him comfortable here. I’ll come by to wake him every few hours and make sure he’s responsive.” 

Clarke helps him to lie down so he’s not resting on his injured back or shoulder, and he leans back against her, comfortable.

Abby stops them. “I failed today,” she says after a moment. “As a leader. I went into a situation with partial information and made a bad call.” She looked at each of them, staring until they averted their eyes. “So did you. Mistakes happen, but you two need to do better in the future. Half of our people look to you, and today you did not earn the trust they give you.” Her expression softens. “Take care of him.”

Clarke’s face is red and jaw clenched tight against tears, and Bellamy stares at the floor. She is right, they failed. He failed. Again.

Bellamy runs to his tent, gathers a fur and rolls up it behind him, shoring him up so he won’t fall backwards.

They sit on either side of him, and he curls into them both, spread out and pale and shaking.

“Your mom is right,” Bellamy says after a moment, looking down at Murphy, who even in his sleep looks scared and tired and in pain.

“I know,” Clarke says. She does. They should have done a better job of healing Murphy when he came back. They shouldn’t have let their anger or pride get in the way of helping him, or even really looking to see if he was okay, and while they had taken some damage, so had he. Maybe it could have been avoided.

He has tears on his cheeks, and Clarke wipes them away. “We’ll do better.”

Bellamy brushes Murphy’s hair away from his face, checks the bandage for more bleeding. “Yes,” he says, and absently runs his fingers through Murphy’s hair. “We will.”

**Author's Note:**

> come bother/prompt /yell at me on [tumblr](www.racetrackthehiggins.tumblr.com)


End file.
